If a team is universally predicted, by "the experts," to finish in the bottom 5 of the league, but makes the playoffs, that is a coaching success, period.
The NFCCG or Pete is a bust narrative is simply ridiculous. This is still a team that is in year one of a rebuild/ reload/ remake whatever you want to call it. No matter the strength of the conference, playoff football is always a different kind of battle. A great coach is necessary, but not sufficient, for a deep run. Making the playoffs is a coaching success.
Saying that Schneider's picks were hamstrung by Carroll trading them away, but Schneider gets all the credit for the draft is equally ridiculous. Both share the blame/ credit for the vision, and for building a team with this potential. Another coaching success.
That's an important part of Fade's shtick: anything bad that happens for the Seahawks is Carroll's fault, and anything good that happens for the Seahawks is due to somebody else overcoming Carroll's failures. In the past, it was mostly Wilson. Even when it looks like Carroll has done something really good, Fade finds a way to give the credit to somebody else. He starts with the conclusion, that Carroll is hurting the team, and then cherry-picks data to support it.
Remember, Fade had been telling us for years that the team should fire Carroll, invest heavily in Wilson, and get an offense-minded coach who could develop modern schemes based on Wilson's talents. Y'know, exactly what the Broncos did
. He also told us that Carroll was holding Wilson back with a 1970s-football philosophy and a complete unwillingness to run modern schemes like the one the Seahawks are running to great success now (and by that, I mean "now that Wilson's gone"). And Fade told us the Broncos were an organization being run much better than the Seahawks, making much-better free-agent acquisitions and drafting much better. Given that and the Broncos' poor records (and therefore more-valuable draft picks), the Broncos' roster was supposedly quite superior to the poorly run Seahawks'.
I know it might sound crazy, but it almost seems like Pete Carroll might know more about how to run an NFL team than a guy constantly posting wildly wrong takes on a fan message board.
I'll give the guy credit for two things.
First, he isn't just wrong all the time, but
spectacularly so, and with an arrogance that makes it extra-entertaining when his predictions and assertions are totally blown up by actual NFL results.
@LeaveLynchAlone has pointed out that this makes Fade's posts worth reading, and I agree completely.
Second, what an athlete! NFL goalposts weigh over 500 pounds, and this guy moves them really far and really fast. As
@Maelstrom787 has so artfully shown by quoting Fade's posts from this thread and from other threads in the recent past, in a matter of weeks we've gone from the Seahawks being a 5-12 team with a roster so weak that
nobody could even get close to winning a title with it, to the Seahawks being a team so solid that if Carroll doesn't take it to the NFCCG, he will have failed. Anything to be able to say Carroll failed.
For those who think the speed with which Fade moves the goalposts violates special relativity, don't worry. The superluminal speeds don't violate relativity because no information is transmitted.
